Kristoffersen Takes World Champs GS Win
After finishing fourth in the GS at the 2017 World Champs in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen surprised pre-race favorites Marcel Hirscher of Austria, and Alexis Pinturault of France, to take his first career World Championships gold. Hirscher - who has been ill and had to cancel his press conference earlier this week - held on for second, as first-run leader Pinturault took the bronze.
Athletes were challenged by warm conditions, similar to what the women’s faced in their GS Thursday - without the swirling wind.
“It was about time to get a medal! It’s really great, we’ve been working insanely, so it’s amazing. I haven’t won a GS since 2015," said Kristoffersen. “I’ve been so close so many times, and today was pretty good!”
Ted Ligety (Park City, Utah) led three Americans with an 11th-place giant slalom finish at the 2019 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Are, Sweden, Friday. Tommy Ford (Bend, Ore.) was right behind in 12th, and Ryan Cochran-Siegle (Starksboro, Vt.) was 21st.
“That course was just a gunner. It was so, so straight. It’s far from my specialty, that’s for sure.” said Ligety, a three-time giant slalom World Champion, who made an impressive second-run recovery, after going through a panel, to hold on and finish.
“I was going for it...when it’s a night race, with this kind of snow, this much terrain, I was taking a lot of risks,” he said. “I had just one huge mistake that probably cost me the lead at this point. It probably would not have been enough to get a medal. I was just trying to cut line and be clean. There is no margin for error when you’re probably going 60 miles per hour in there. I just got hooked inside a little bit and went through the middle of the panel. When you’re going that fast and something grabs you like that, it just throws you offline. I thought for sure I was going to fall, and then the next thing I knew I was like ‘I’m still in it, I guess.’ That’s just a testament to how straight and open the course was, I still had room to get back in it.”
In the end, it came down to the course set for Ligety. “Some courses fit you and some don’t,” said Ligety, who was competing in his seventh World Championships. “I definitely need to work on my straighter course sets because my bread and butter has always been turning, and (straighter course sets) has definitely been more of the trend.”
Ford’s result was a career-best for him after finishing 19th in the giant slalom at the 2015 World Champs in Beaver Creek, Colo., and 14th in the super-G in Garmisch, Germany, in 2011. Cochran-Siegle also posted a career-best World Champs GS result. His previous best was 25th at the 2017 World Champs.
